


friend of foxes

by tigrrmilk



Category: The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:46:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5468708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigrrmilk/pseuds/tigrrmilk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Oh my god,” Doreen says. “We’re in another universe!!! Oh I hope this is the universe where everyone is Thor!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	friend of foxes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VanaTuivana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VanaTuivana/gifts).



The thing is. The thing is that Nancy isn’t sure she’d even _want_ to be able to talk to cats.

“So, you like talking to fish?” she says to Ken, one time when they’re alone at brunch, waiting for Tomas and Doreen to show up. He’s looking at a book that’s probably either about computers or fighting, based on the intensity of his gaze, which is _totally_ against the spirit of brunch.

“Fish are my comrades,” he says. He doesn’t even look up. Nancy spears a pancake on her fork and thinks about cats instead of trying to talk to him anymore. Cats are way better than people, and a large part of that is because they _don’t talk_.

 

\---

 

Nancy loves cats. They’re so capricious. Wilfull. You have to keep on feeding them and brushing them if they’re long-haired or old, and they keep on living their lives. When they press their face to you, it always seems like it’s because they want to do that. Not just that they want food. If they want food, they yell.

She’s not sure if she’d actually want to know what cats really think about all of the time! “Ho ho, my head is incredibly itchy and your lower calf looks like the right shape to bash it on!” Mew might say, and then where would Nancy be? Well, probably still sitting down, watching Mew bash her stupid little head against her leg. But, still.

 

\---

 

None of which is to say that it doesn’t kind of suck to be the Xander of the group. Nancy doesn’t like Xander. He’s the reason that she never wants to rewatch Buffy. Like, why is he even there? Nancy likes Buffy, and Willow...

But.

“I can’t believe they haven’t invited me,” Doreen says, for the fifth time in the space of about twelve minutes. “They know how much I love nuts!” She turns her head to her shoulder, but Tippy’s not there. She pulls an exaggeratedly sad face at this.

Nancy puts her face onto the table and says “fnmabjHFSJsjhsa.”

“I _know_ ,” Doreen says, mournfully.

“You don’t hibernate,” Nancy says, finally, after she turns her head to the side and is able to say words again. “And I don’t think you’d fit in the tree.”

“Squirrels don’t hibernate, Nancy,” Doreen says. “They just... sleep a lot when it’s cold out, okay. They cuddle. It’s awesome. Why can’t I do that!”

“Because you’ve got problem sheets to do,” Nancy says. “Duh.”

Also it’s like sixty degrees out, but Doreen’s looking pathetic enough about the squirrel party without Nancy pointing out that they haven’t even got a proper _winter_ this year.

 

\---

 

Nancy googles “do squirrels hibernate” and it turns out people LOVE to argue about whether squirrels hibernate. “You could solve so many arguments,” she says to Doreen. “Squirrel Girl should just sign up for a Quora account.”

She pauses.

“Or you could just fuck with people?” Probably more fun. “ _Actually, squirrels are always sleeping. They are much more successful sleepwalkers than any other species_.”

“People on Twitter just ask me how they can get a _pet_ squirrel,” Doreen says. “Like they’re toys or something!”

“Hey,” Nancy says. “Pets are not _toys_. Mew is a person, you know.”

 

 

\---

 

Doreen doesn’t make it to the last lecture of the semester, and when it’s done Nancy pulls out her phone to find ten increasingly frazzled messages from her:

 

            i said it’s not cool to have parties and not invite your friends and tippy told me about their fight with leap-frog

            I SAID IT’S NOT COOL TO FIGHT LEAP-FROG WITHOUT INVITING YOUR FRIENDS TOO!!!

 

Nancy doesn’t bother pointing out the obvious flaw with this argument. Like, duh, Doreen. Not all of your friends _want_ to fight Leap-Frog.

 

            oh it turns out leap-frog attacked them when they were about to come and get me!!!!

            YOU’LL PAY FOR THIS, LF!!!!!!!!!!!

            i mean they’re all fine. it’s not like they had to fight GALACTUS, am i right!!!

            i’ll pick up some takeout on the way back k

 

\---

 

“So,” Nancy says, in the dying hours of the Sunday after the last day of college of the year. They’re sitting on the floor and watching Tomas play Super Mario while Ken tries to demonstrate how his power of slowly growing to fit his container _works_. Apparently, very slowly. Maybe it’s time to take him _out_ of the big aquarium his parents sent to the house for Christmas.

Carefully. Very carefully.

“So,” she says, again, and stretches. There’s a lot of tension in her back, but it won’t pop. “Shouldn’t you all be packing?” She keeps her face v studiedly neutral. It’s not like she’d spent weeks avoiding the question, or anything.

“Why?” Doreen says. “Did Doom say anything about knocking our building down? Oh, I bet it was Hulk. You have NO IDEA how infuriating it is when he asks me to explain my jokes on Twitter!! Hello, maybe they’re just not for him, you know!!”

“I’m staying here,” Tomas says. “This time of year isn’t really a big deal for me.” Mario hits a fire flower and annoying music starts to play.

“Me too,” Ken says, inside the aquarium yet apparently still able to hear the conversation. “Uh, it seems safest! I need to be here to promote justice and also to set up my new aquarium.”

“If you haven’t put the lid on the aquarium,” Nancy says, “then that’s probably why you haven’t grown any to fit it.”

“This is where I live,” Doreen says, and she leans to knock into Nancy with her shoulder, but lightly. “Where would I even go?”

“I read this article about how women spend a lot of their time watching men,” Nancy says, thoughtfully, as she sweeps her eyes once again from Ken to Tomas, who are both re-absorbed in their activities. She’s in the middle of crocheting an awesome Hulk jumper for her cat, so it’s not like she’s not doing other things too, but... “I feel like this is probably not what she was thinking of.”

Ken pulls the lid on top of the aquarium finally, and Nancy thinks: well, let’s hope it’s ventilated.

 

\---

 

Doreen’s parents visit on Christmas Eve with a weird variety of festive foods and presents for everyone, and another set of photographs of Doreen as a kid -- this time, all Christmas-themed.

“Nooo,” Doreen wails, but in a happy way.

“You started wearing that eyeliner young, huh,” Tomas says. Nancy would never dream of telling Doreen, but she _totally_ googled Squirrel Girl after discovering her secret identity and she actually thinks the triangular eyeliner is a good look for her. Definitely a better look than anything _she_ settled on as a teenager. 

Doreen looks better now, though.

 

\---

 

Doreen vanishes for a few hours on Christmas Day, but she’s back in time for dinner. Tomas cooked. Nancy played Super Mario while Ken tried to pretend he wasn’t interested in it. “Dude,” Nancy had said, finally. “There’s 2-player. Join now or lose your chance.”

“Avengers Christmas involves way more feeding kids and way less fighting than I thought,” Doreen says. She looks down at her tail and gives it a pat. “I almost lost you!”

Nancy serves her some potatoes. “No gruesome tales at dinner, thank you. That goes for you too,” she nods at Ken, who sometimes likes to tell them about whichever Conan the Barbarian story he’s read that week or whatever.

“One of the kids we went to see is called Leech, and he stopped all of our powers from working!” Doreen says. “My tail just like, vanished.”

“I didn’t realise that your tail was part of your powers,” Tomas says.

“We _are our powers_ ,” Ken says, with a mouthful of potato. Nancy rubs at her temples.

“What was it like?” she says. “Not having your tail.”

“I almost fell over,” Doreen says. “My center of gravity was way off.”

 

\---

 

They’re on their way to a New Year’s Eve party when it happens. It’s like the sidewalk is gone, or like -- it swallows them up. But before Nancy can even scream, they’re suddenly somewhere else. She looks down at her feet. There’s sidewalk there again. But it’s different.

“Why is everything green?” Nancy says.

Tomas shouts: “CHIPMUNK PALS!” but nobody comes.

“You just spoke to the chipmunks in English,” Nancy says.

Tomas’s brow furrows. “Oh my god,” Doreen says. “We’re in another universe!!! Oh I hope this is the universe where everyone is Thor!”

“ _We’re_ not Thor,” Ken says, hands splayed on his chest.

“Duh,” Doreen says.

 

\---

 

Doreen is a whole less excited when she realises that this is a universe where her powers are gone. “I miss my tail,” she says, about a million times. She has to keep steadying herself by grabbing Nancy’s arm.

“How does that even work?” Nancy says. “So like, when Leech goes near like, Nightcrawler, does he stop being blue?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Doreen says, “but I’m absolutely definitely Not a mutant so I think the loss of my powers affects me in a totally different, absolutely non-dependent on any mutant science way anyway.”

They try to at least buy some pizza, but their money’s not green enough for this universe and also none of them really fancy green pizza. “UGH!” Nancy says, as she sees a green fox dart into an alleyway. “I want my cat and I want to go home!”

The fox pokes its head back round the alleyway and it says, “did you say _CAT_?”

Nancy feels like she’s dreaming. “Did you say _anything_?”

And that’s how Nancy discovers that in this universe, she can talk to _all_ of the animals. She can hear pigeons, rats, and probably even cats but they’re all probably inside, cuddled up somewhere warm. She can’t blame them.

 

\---

 

“I like cats,” the fox keeps saying, because he seems to have adopted Nancy. “But the last time I saw one it swiped me on the nose and it really hurt! My feelings were hurt, too. I was just trying to make a new friend. I was new to the city! I still am!”

“Who deals with Universes?” Doreen says. “What if there’s a version of them in this Universe?”

They have seen enough non-Thor green people walking past that it’s become apparent that this is not a Universe where everyone is Thor. Nancy is not as disappointed as Doreen is. “Maybe everyone here is She-Hulk?” she says, hopefully.

They end up at Stark Tower, because it looks the same -- just, like, green -- and going to the head avenger is probably their best bet. The people at the desk back away when they go in and page him through pretty quickly, which is like, weird.

“I think they’re scared of us because we’re not green,” Nancy says to Doreen, out of the corner of her mouth.

“I like the green,” Tomas says, thoughtfully, because Nancy isn’t as discreet as she thinks she is.

“It does all seem very... aesthetic,” Ken says, thoughtfully. “It’s like how the world looks through my goggles. Just less awesome...”

“I don’t think that’s how you use _aesthetic_ ,” Nancy says, but this time everybody acts like they can’t hear her. 

 

\---

 

“Well, you see,” Tony Stark says, half in his (green) Iron Man suit and half wearing a t-shirt. He’s realised that they’re not really any trouble and is kind of keen to get away from them, but Doreen is asking a lot of questions. “Anything not...” he gestures at them.

“Green?” Doreen says.

“We don’t have a word for it,” he says. “But something to do with the sun’s rays here gives you all _powers_.”

The sun, of course, is also green. Nancy can see it through the window.

“Green,” Nancy says. “ _Green_ has given me powers."

Doreen’s brow furrows. “But Green is _my_ name,” she says. “Why did it take mine away?”

“Can you send us back home?” Tomas asks.

Tony shakes his head. “Nobody here can do anything like that,” he says. “I can barely get this to fly.” He looks wistful. “I met another version of me, once...”

Nancy sticks her head out of the window. She feels -- light-headed. Weird. They’re pretty high up. So is she the only person here with powers? And her powers are: she can talk to animals. “Hey!” she yells at a passing bird, and it almost falls out of the sky in fright.

 

\---

 

She ends up having to ask the fox for help. “Have you seen anyone else like us?” she says. It’s actually pretty unnerving for foxes to be green, she thinks. “You know. Not green.”

It turns out that animals do know what green means. The fox whines. “You’re my best friend, you can’t go.”

“I don’t know how you can stand this,” Nancy says to Doreen.

“I have no idea what that fox is saying, but I bet it’s awesome,” Doreen says, pouting.

 

\---

 

“Do you think Doom sent us here?” Doreen asks.

“I’m not used to people attacking me like this and then just vanishing,” Tomas says, thoughtfully. “Maybe it was just an accident.”

“It’s no accident!” Ken says. “It’s a challenge! We should look for clues! ... Where did we arrive, again?”

Privately, Nancy agrees with Tomas. She rolls her eyes. Doreen rests her head on her shoulder and sighs. “Your new red hair looks even more awesome here,” she says. “I bet everyone’s super jealous.”

Nancy looks down and sees a few squirrels on the other side of the road, staring at her and chattering. She wonders if she should tell Doreen, but she thinks better of it. “You’ve got red hair too,” she says.

“Ginger,” Doreen says, but slightly happier than she’d sounded before.

“Red-head,” Nancy says, and she pats Doreen on the head.

 

\---

 

Ken is still determined to find how they got sent to this world, and practically every time they turn a corner it seems like he’s trying to fight someone -- or some _thing_ \-- new.

“That’s an industrial dumpster,” Nancy says, tired. "Get away from it, what if it tries to eat you. Not that I care."

Tomas frowns at his phone. “It’s letting me text my mom,” he says. “But I can’t work out if she’s actually _my_ mom or a bizarro version.”

“Ask her about green,” Doreen says.

“How can I make that sound normal??” Tomas says, with a half-smile.

“You know your mom!” Doreen says. “What does she like??”

“Rita Hayworth, tall buildings and Law and Order,” Tomas says. "The show. She doesn't like actual cops much." Doreen looks thoughtful. Ken is acting as the lookout. Nancy takes his phone and writes:

            what’s the episode of law and order with the criminal with green hair called, again?

“I have no idea if that’s even an episode,” Tomas says, but he sends it. Five seconds later she’s texted back to say:

            You’re going to have 2 b more specific!!

“Well,” he says. “Either it really is her or it's bizarro her and she’s just pretending she knows what green means because she doesn't want to look stupid.”

“I want to go home,” Ken says. “I miss my aquarium.”

 

\---

 

It’s another two hours before America Chavez arrives. Nancy had put the word out with some birds that are still tugging at her sleeves. _Her_ powers still work. She pops her gum and says, “so you want to go home?”

“Yes!” Doreen says. She keeps having to pull her jeans up because they’re made to accommodate her tail and she usually doesn’t even need a beltl.

“Hhhsdkbglhaejfbg,” Nancy says, because _America Chavez_.

 

\---

 

“Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one in New York without powers,” Nancy says to Doreen, once they’re back home.

“I hate not having powers,” Doreen says, and Nancy pokes her with the blunt end of her knitting needle. “Uh, I mean,” Doreen says. “You don’t need powers! You’re plenty rad without them!”

“You too,” Nancy says. “But you look weird without your tail.”

“I know, right,” Doreen says. “And my butt looked so _flat_ in Green World.” She sounds like she’s still mourning, even though her tail is back.

“I hate Mario and Luigi,” they hear Ken say to Tomas, from the other room. “They’re both terrible at fighting.”

“Maybe you should set up your aquarium before the semester starts,” Tomas says.

Nancy and Doreen fist-bump. “We’re still better at life than the boys,” Doreen says, in her best sing-song voice. Nancy has already started knitting with the wool she got for Christmas, and Doreen is wearing the hat Nancy knitted for her. She tries to take a selfie of the two of them but Nancy isn’t feeling it at the moment. “Hashtag SquadGoals!!!”

“Leave me alone now,” Nancy says. “No, seriously. I told you about my strictly no verbal hashtags rule. Leave. Go. See you later. When I’m done with this.”

Mew is asleep on the counter, and she’s so happy to be alone with her own thoughts, and her cat’s rumbling sleep-purring, and not having to deal with the neuroses of any more animals. Sorry, fox, she thinks. Make better friends than me.

_Well, no. But maybe make friends with other foxes._

She smiles to herself as she thinks about all the knitting she’ll be able to fit in before next semester, and as she hears Doreen join the discussion with Ken and Tomas. “Duh, they’re only as good at fighting as you are,” Doreen says. “And there are plenty of good things to do beside fighting!”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] friend of foxes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13395741) by [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins), [tigrrmilk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigrrmilk/pseuds/tigrrmilk)




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